It is almost emotional the moment that the Moroccan landscape turns from green to brown and slowly start to loose it’s vibrancy to become spoiled, unveiled…. desert…Sahara!!!

The entrance to the Western Sahara

The Sahara desert, whose stories you have been hearing about for years, since your memories go back to school, is laying just in front of you, shining in the sunset light with its wide and fear, its charm, its darkness and above all its silence.

We had some shepherds welcoming us in the land where we decided to settle for the 1st night in the Sahara.

One of them watched us for a while, getting closer and closer and revealing a smile when we all greeted him. The other staring at us as well, asked us 20 dirhams (2 euros) to agree.

So it was, and before the sun was down we all had our tends up, ready for the night.

camping at the edge of the desert

We managed to make up a camp fire, and we cooked, before sitting next to the fire.

Camp fire in the Sahara

For a night we lost the awareness of time and space. It felt weird and nice at the same time to cancee the concept of time from the mind: 8pm looked like midnight. The night is long when you spend it in the nature, according to her rhythm. Night means darkness, and in the desert it starts very early and can be very long.

When even the light of the fire was gone, everything got darker and the stars could be seen in the sky, even though they were not shining as they should because Agadir was still too close to get peach dark.

We had to wait for a starring night only 24 hours, as our second night in the desert has been in a camping place right in the middle of nowhere.

The guys next to the fire. Windy and cold ngts are the ones in the desert

We waited until 11pm when the owner said he was going to switch off the lights and it was a long waiting. It was dark since 6.30, at 11pm it felt already like the middle of the night, but it was worth it. Just when we thought he was not going to do it anymore, the lights went down and the amazing view of the sky at night, enriched by stars, enlighted our sight. No words are enough to express the feeling of being under such a great view. It was ages I didn’t see the stars at night. We are just not used anymore, as we live in the towns. It’s sad if you think about it. And still, once there, being under the stars at night feels natural.

It was a great moment. A silent one. A silent great moment of solitary beauty.

It was a moment of enrichment of the spirit, a bond created beetween the Nature and myself.

Breathtaking Sahara

I know there will be many more nights when I will be able to watch the stars, but the first night, in the desert, with the stars was just a great unforgettable moment.

The beauty of such a great moment didn’t last long, though, as in the middle of the night a sand storm started to hit the campsite. The idyllic and peaceful moment of few hours earlier was just a memory around 4 in the morning. I and Britney woke up in the middle of the storm, with our tend getting deformed by the strong wind. At the beginning we thought the tend would make it and we fall asleep again, but after a bit when I woke up the second time and I realized I could almost see the stars from the tend, I woke up Britney to tell her something was wrong. We went out of the tend and we were invested by a sand storm all around. We looked at the tend, semi destroyed by the wind, and looked inside it and saw that everything was covered by sand.

Cooking

We then understood our night was ended and decided to put down the tend, but that was not the easiest thing in the world as the wind was too strong to even move.

In the darkness, we saw Andreas having the same problem, and so the three of us began to close both tends, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the storm. It was almost comic, and when we finally managed to do it, it was almost sunrise.

So the days go by, and tomorrow it’s already one month since we left Reykjavik. Everyday it’s a new small or big adventure, every day a story to tell, an emotion to add, a new place to discover.

Bedouin tends

At the moment as for all day we had the sand hitting the road so badly that we wouldn’t even drive at 55Kms/hr as usual, we had to stop much earlier than the programmed stop. We are now lodging at a campsite in Tan Tan, a small village just over the border between Morocco and Western Sahara. The place is nice, the lady prepares amazing ice creams and for the night we are staying in a beduin tend, the all 15 of us.

Tomorrow we go on, another day in the desert, another place to discover, another adventure to live.